Knitted souls

If I could find a picture of a soul, I would try to knit one.  Because I think that my soul is made of knitting.

Knitting is the first craft I learned as a child (as far as I can remember).  I have very clear memories of my little 6 year-old self pulling my tiny wooden rocking chair up in front of my parents' woodstove with a little purple ball of yarn and knitting needles, on which my mother had started a scarf for me, and rocking away furiously while I knitted.  My mother went outside to get my father so he could look at me, because apparently it was really cute.

When I was in college and wanted to start crafting, I tried to teach myself crochet out of a book I got at AC Moore.  I got the gist of it, but it never really stuck, and I haven't picked it up again since.  A year or two later, however, knitting needles caught my eye and I tried that again.

That stuck.

I've never been a particularly good knitter.  I can do the basics - scarf, hat, dishcloths, Swiffer covers, iPod cases with a single button - but I'm not fancy.  And while I'd love to be able to go out in an adorable sweater, or with some really stellar mittens, and tell people that I made them, for me, gettin' fancy isn't really the point.

See, I just knit for my soul, mostly.  I knit because it makes me feel better and because the gentle repetition of it is relaxing.  I make a point to select soft, (usually) natural yarns that look nice and feel good running through my fingers.  I frequently knit on large needles because it goes faster, getting me to that nice feeling of accomplishment ASAP.  And the only things I knit for others are dishcloths and iPod covers, usually, because I prefer to knit things that I don't have to pay much attention to, and it's likely that I will still mess up.  That's fine for me - I don't mind wearing a scarf with dropped stitches, or a hat that's a bit too big - but I do want the things I give to the people I love to be as close to perfect as possible.

Knitting is a retreat for me.  It's a treat for me.  I don't usually knit gifts because I can't stand the pressure.  While at work or in school, I tend to work well under high pressure, knitting is my solace, and for me it just has to be relaxing.

When I know I'll have a hard time sleeping on a particular night, I pull out my needles and knit.  I usually have 2-3 projects going at once, so I've almost always got something that suits my mood.  And if I don't, I start something new.  Sometimes I need to focus on the knitting to distract myself from the other overwhelming thoughts of the day - so I break out the really cute monkey-face dishcloth pattern, where I have to count my stitches and remember which row to knit and to purl.  Sometimes I just need my brain to allow itself to turn off - those nights, I work on a scarf.

There's something extra-soothing about fluffy, cozy yarn and big needles, and the big, soft loops they make, that just helps me settle.  As I knit row after row, I can feel the constant pressure behind my eyes easing; I can feel my shoulders dropping and relaxing; I can feel my hands unclench as I let the yarn slip through them.

Some people get frustrated by knitting.  They're perfectionists; they have high expectations of themselves; they don't let the mistakes just happen; everything has to be just "so."  I used to be one of those people.  I used to knit everything so tight.  It was just because I wasn't relaxing.  I was convinced, for the longest time, that if I loosened my grip on my yarn, then I would totally lose my grip on everything, and it would all slide out of control around me and drop like so many stitches.  As I've continued to knit over the years, I've learned that I don't have to clench everything so tightly.  Some things, I can just ease up, and back off, and instead of falling apart, it will fall into place.

Sometimes, the only thing I can do that with is knitting.  But that's ok, because sometimes I can do it with other things, too.

Making Curtains

Dude.  I totally made these curtains last week.

I know, I know.  I already told you that.  But now I'm going to tell you how I made them.  

First of all, I needed a sewing machine.  I didn't have one.  Wife took me out shopping last week, knowing that I'd been cruising Craigslist looking for a cheap, secondhand machine.  She walked me into Joann Fabrics and informed me that I would not be buying an old machine, but would in fact be getting a new one.  Mostly because I'm probably going to break it, so she thought I should get something warrantied.  Which is, admittedly, a really good idea.

I ended up with this one.

Not only does it come with a 10-year manufacturer's warranty, there's also a 1-year in-store warranty - which means that if (when) I break it, if it's been less than 1 year since I bought it, I can take it back to Joann's and the nice ladies at Mainely Sewing Machines will fix it for me.  Thank goodness.

We picked out some fabric that would make cute curtains for the bathroom and bedroom, since those rooms were the most urgently in need of curtains.  Really, it was urgent - if we didn't stand in the right spot in the bathroom to change, our neighbors could see us.  Which means that the neighbors have probably seen my boobies about a dozen times since we moved in, because I am forgetful.  Oops.

I spent some time cruising the Internet to figure out how in the world I would make these curtains.  I signed up for AllFreeSewing.com, to look at some patterns and tutorials.  And then I found one.  Suzannah at Adventures in Dressmaking broke everything down so clearly, I decided this was the tutorial I would use.

So I made all my measurements.  I carefully added in the half-inch foldovers for the hems,  THEN added in the width of my actual hem (because if you don't, apparently the raw edges will wear down and your hems will fall out, and you'll be left with a sad, sorry mess).  I cut and tore my fabric to get my edges straight; I carefully folded, pinned, pressed, and pinned again.  I had threaded my machine with a carefully-coordinated shade of teal green thread, so when the curtains finally were pinned into shape, I sat down, lined everything up - and started to sew.

And promptly jammed the machine.

Apparently, pinheads don't fit well under the sewing foot of the machine.  The result?  The hems on my first set of curtains are puckery and zig-zagged - not purposefully, like zig-zag stitching, but incidentally, since my first reaction was - I kid you not - to just swerve around the pins while sewing.

. . .

It's a damn good thing Wife loves me and thinks it's cute that I'm trying to reteach myself to sew.  I foresee lots more crooked sets of curtains in our future.

Learning to sew

My mother tried to teach me to sew when I was about 6 years old.  This is also around the time when she tried to teach me to knit, and to crochet.  None of these efforts were really successful, and I can't even remember whose idea it was for her to teach me these things, hers or mine.  But she tried nonetheless, in spite of my best efforts to thwart her.

Now, 20 years later, I really, really wish I'd been paying attention to her lessons.  I grew up wearing mittens, scarves, and the occasional sweater that my mother had knit for me, and dresses she had sewn herself on her little Singer.  The desire to be domestic didn't really kick in for me until I was about 18 and needed something to do with my spare time, other than read.  I had thought for years "Oh, I could knit if I wanted to," but promptly realized when I first attempted knitting that no, no I could NOT knit.  Thus began the painful process of reteaching myself the things my mother had first attempted over a decade earlier.

Sewing intimidated me the most.  With knitting and crocheting, all you have to worry about is a strand or two of yarn, and one or two needles.  Four, if you're feeling fancy and knit in the round.  (I am not fancy.)  It doesn't matter if you can't cut in a straight line, have poor eye-hand-foot coordination, or tend to stab yourself whenever you're near something sharp.  You just need to be able to count and make loops, really, and the yarn and needles to the rest.  But with sewing . . . well, let's just say that I lack a few fundamental life skills.  (See the rest of this paragraph.)

When Wife and I moved into a house, however, we found ourselves seriously lacking a few things.  One of those things was curtains.  There are about a dozen windows in our house - all different sizes, too - and we only had 3 curtains, none of which fit any of those damn windows.  I got it into my head that maybe, just maybe, it was time for me to learn to sew.

After all, how badly can you mess up a rectangle?

Not so bad for my first set, if I do say so myself.

The curtains could have gone way, way worse.  Thankfully, not only did they end up not sucking horribly, but Wife loves me enough to tell me repeatedly that they're really cute and they look awesome. She also told me, before I even tried to make them, that she'd be happy with whatever I made - even if that meant I tacked raw fabric up over the windows with thumbtacks.  Ah.  Nothing like setting a low bar for me to surpass.  

We'll see how long that bar stays low . . .